Girl 27 (2007)

Director: David Stenn

Writer: David Stenn

Composer: Hal Lindes

Starring: Patricia Douglas, "Baby" Peggy Montgomery, Richard Bann, Kelly Brown, Ded Comstock, Judy Lewis, Patti Minter, David Stenn, Michael Taitelman, Jack Terry, Greta Van Sustreren

More info: IMDb

Tagline: Hollywood's shocking scandal...EXPOSED.

Plot: The reclusive Patricia Douglas comes out of hiding to discuss the 1937 MGM scandal, in which the powerful film studio tricked her and over 100 other underage girls into attending a stag party, where she was raped.

My rating: 5.5/10

Will I watch it again? No.

I commend Stenn for his discovering and bringing this woman's tragic story to the public after having been buried for 65 years.  It' disgusting how this poor girl was treated that night and more so in the months and years that followed with the corruption that kept justice from being served.  Patricia Douglas, at age 17, was braver than most of us would be at any age.  I was shocked (but not surprised) by the events that unfolded in this picture.  Hollywood back in the 20s and 30s was a hotbed of corruption and scandal and the studios spared no expense on covering up murder, rape and all manner of illegal activity and keeping it out of the press so that the money machine could keep doing what it did best.

Now then, this movie.  Stenn is shameless in his approach and execution.  His "look at what I did/I'm so special" throwing himself into the film and namedropping Jacqueline Onassis ("She said, 'If anyone can tell this story, you can, David'") was bad enough but when you get to the scene where he's in the Las Vegas hotel room sitting on the bed it's just getting ridiculous.  There are far too many unnecessary movie clips from the era that show men slapping women around.  He even goes so far as to use clips like this to punctuate Ms. Douglas' story AS SHE TELLS IT!!!  It's unintentionally funny and incredibly tasteless.  There's even footage of Ms. Douglas saying how poorly she treated Stenn in the beginning and how nice he is (as well as bossy and insistent on getting his way) and how they should film a documentary on him rather than her.  What a turn off.  It lessens the effect of her powerful and tragic story by including moments like this in the film.  There's no reason other than ego that they're even present.  You could have cut a good 20 minutes out of this bullshit alone.  Something else that bugged me was with as much footage as Stenn includes of Peggy Montgomery, he lists her as an "extra" each time her name appears.  Well it turns out she was a lot more than an extra and she was a big child star in the 1920s rivaling only Jackie Coogan.  She might have been doing extra work at the time of the crime in 1937 but I'd hardly call her an extra.  She starred in dozens of short films for cryin' out loud.  It's just poor film making to make such a disrespectful error as this and it's a shame that this picture has to bring down an important story as this.